Down By the Bay

Kindergarteners are practicing rhyming in their classrooms, so to reinforce that concept, we did a fun activity with the rhyming words in the book/song "Down By the Bay." After going through all of the rhyming animals and making up some of our own, we created watermelons out of paper plates and glued on a rhyming set to create a verse from the song. On the top of the plate I wrote, "Did you ever see a..." and they glued on their first picture. On the bottom of the plate I wrote, "Kissing a.." (or whatever the action was) and they glued on their bottom picture. The kids had a blast doing it, however, it was so busy during the cutting and gluing day that I didn't get any pictures of their finished plates. I posted a similar post last year, so you can look back and find the picture sheets that I use and examples of finished watermelons.

Coloring their watermelons

Don't forget the seeds!

Lines and Spaces

The 1st graders are practicing their lines and spaces on the staff. To practice, we used our lap packs and bingo markers to mark the 5 lines and the 4 spaces. We always practice counting from the bottom to the top, that way when we learn the note names in 4th grade, they follow the same rule. We also played a relay game where they had to race to put their foam dot on the correct line or space on the rug staff.
And can I just say again how much I LOVE my new flipForms?! They are absolutely perfect for creating small, organized groups when doing an activity like this!

All About Apples!

1st graders always study apples in their classrooms as part of their Science unit in September. I like to join in and spend a week doing apple activities in music class. We learn songs like "Apple Tree" and "Way Up High in the Apple Tree". We also learn a xylophone bordun to go along with "Apple Tree" which is a great way to review playing the steady beat at the beginning of the year.

This year I found a pack of bulletin board pictures at Target that included apples, mittens, flowers, and leaves. So far, I have used the mittens to make a treble clef memory game and I used the apples to notate the rhythm of "Apple Tree". I put the students in groups of 2-3 and they had to put their apples in the correct order to form the rhythm for the first 2 measures of the song (I put the rhythm up on the board as well). Once they were finished, they could create their own 2 measure apple rhythm. I think I'll use them later on when we learn So, Mi, and La. The students can place the apples up or down to show the melody. I also plan to use them as beat trackers with my Kindergarteners when we learn "Apple Tree". So many possibilities!!

Coffee Can Drumming

For the past year I have had the teacher's lounge save me their empty coffee cans and I finally have enough for each of my students. I'm so excited to use these this year for rhythm practice. This week, the 4th graders are reviewing 16th notes, so we are using them to play various rhythm patterns with tika-ti and ti-tika. At first we tried playing them with rhythm sticks, but that got a little too loud for my neighboring teachers. Last time we did it, we used our hands and that worked pretty well. We still might use rhythm sticks, just not with as many students playing at one time. The kids are always on their best behavior when they see the coffee cans out because they know only the quiet students will get to play them!